


where are you taking me

by kavinsky



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Latin, M/M, Oh Dear, Tarot Cards, adam driving the bmw, and a deer, and swearing, blue being Not Psychic, did i mention there's kissing, gansey wearing his glasses i know you all love that, noah smirking entirely too much, plenty of angst and some pining, ronan doing delicate things, there's some chainsaw too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 07:38:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4738070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kavinsky/pseuds/kavinsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>ronan just loves how adam looks in the sunlight  (ronan and adam fix the ley line) and trusts him more than he thought he could ever trust anyone (adam driving the bmw) and maybe wants to kiss him a lot (who wouldn’t want to kiss adam)</p>
            </blockquote>





	where are you taking me

**Author's Note:**

> dedicated to yashvi <3

Ronan paused, considering the steering wheel. He sat outside the St. Agnes administrative building with Blue humming to herself in the backseat.

At Monmouth last night, when listening to Gansey talk about energy variabilities, Adam had asked him to come help mend the line. Ronan assumed it was because Blue was coming and Adam wanted to even the odds. Now, he wondered if it was because Adam didn’t know what to expect; maybe the Greywaren was just an insurance procedure.

It had been a mixture of Gansey’s suggestions and Cabeswater’s insistence. He thought the ley line should be more powerful, or at least more stable, if they were to find Glendower. “And,” he finished conclusively, “even if I’m wrong, there’s no harm in it.”

Adam nodded. It did make sense, but Ronan didn’t think he looked entirely thrilled to do it.

“There’s no harm now,” Blue said, “but what if someone wakes the third sleeper? What if they can draw energy from the line? If Adam keeps strengthening it we’d only empower them.” She looked at Gansey imploringly, tapping a neon yellow nail against the map on the floor.

“There’s always risks, Jane. We can’t just not act because something may happen; anything could happen.”

Adam frowned from across the map. He had redrawn the ley line on yet another satellite print out for Gansey, noting Cabeswater and the places he had made repairs. “So you still think it’s safe?”

“Safe as life.”

Noah tucked his cue under his shoulder and pretended to fire it like a shotgun. He aimed it at Adam. “That’s not that safe.”

Adam considered him a moment, probably thinking what Ronan was: he was dead, so he would know, right?

“I think we better check on this one.”

Blue accepted the tarot cards he handed her. Ronan half expected something elaborate, like what she had done the first time they saw her shuffle, but her fingers were forcibly resolute and to the point.

She turned over the first card with a snap of her wrist.

_Magician._

“Cards say hello,” she remarked.

The crease between Adam’s eyebrows deepened and Blue flicked out another card.

_Temperance._

“Balance,” Blue said this with a pointed look to Gansey. “Cabeswater says to go.”

“Deal the third.”

She glanced back up at Adam. This one was deliberate.

_Page of cups._

Blue rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

Weren’t tarot cards supposed to be cryptic? Adam nodded, though, like he had expected it. “Can you come tomorrow? I don’t Cabeswater is going to be patient with this one.”

And then Adam had turned to him.

Ronan couldn’t decide if he agreed because he didn’t mind fucking around in a forest – nothing much different than want Gansey always had him doing – or because it was fucking around in a forest with Adam. It could have been how worried Adam looked, how he was trying to hide it.

 _Damn it._ Ronan hit the horn, fingers drumming against it until he finally saw Adam jogging down the stairs.

“About fucking time,” he said when Adam slid into the passenger seat.

“Some of us do our homework, you know.”

Just when he reached for the stereo, Blue popped up from the back seat. She smacked his hand away. “I’m not listening to your shitty electronic dance music. I bet you don’t even know what language most of it’s in.”

Ronan opened his mouth, but Blue was a torrent. He caught something about cultures, female artists, and a word he thought she thought meant _bigotry_.

Adam smirked. Ronan pressed play and turned the volume up too loud.

 

Adam told him to pull over after an indeterminable amount of time tracked only by miles used. He pointed to a particularly plain swatch of Virginia soil. “It’s not far in.”

Ronan parked haphazardly close to a ditch. Blue slammed the car door after she passed Chainsaw off to Ronan. They trekked through the field, Blue kicking through it, as it haltingly gave way to trees.

“This is definitely it,” Adam murmured.

The forest was unnaturally quiet. It could have been the way the sunlight spotted through the trees or the way they were placed, like a faint remembrance of Cabeswater’s sentinels, that cast a kind of eerie serenity.

Blue leashed her anger after a few minutes of testy silence so she could ask where the damage in the ley line was.

Adam frowned a little. He turned to his left, scuffed a shoe on a dry riverbed of stones Ronan hadn’t notice they stopped at. “Farther.”

He started along the riverbed again, leaving them no choice but to follow.

Eventually Ronan decided words did not suit this place. There was a familiarity in the air he had come to associate with magic, but it was hushed. It was some place that hadn’t seen magic in a while, or it was caught up in the ley line tracking through.

He studied their surroundings instead. The forest had a voice of its own. It didn’t have words, but it spoke about Adam. The sunlight caught Adam at odd angles, framing him in. When it filtered through the leaves it threw twice as many shadows as it should have. The wind snarled around him. Ronan couldn’t hear him make a sound, which may have been the weirdest thing considering he was pretty certain _he_ had stepped on every twig on the forest floor. It could be coincidence, but he wasn’t inclined to believe in that after years of being friends with Gansey. Adam just fit in this world. Somehow he fit better than Ronan, for all the nature that had surrounded him through his childhood.

When Adam glanced over at him, Ronan wondered if he stared too long. He flicked his eyes away, but most of him didn’t care, not really. It wasn’t every day Adam looked like some kind of nature god.

Adam didn’t mention it though. Instead he said, softly like the trees, “This forest feels like a secret. Like it hasn’t known the ley line in a long time.”

Blue nodded. She sounded nearly reverent. “Like it’s holding its breath.”

“I wonder if it could be another focus like Cabeswater someday. Maybe it already was.”

Maybe it was, but Ronan hadn't heard a whisper from the trees. The feeling was the same, this otherness, but it wasn't _enough_. There was something missing. He still felt watched; maybe these just eyes had trees, not mouths. They sighed whenever Adam fixed something, but they didn't share words.

A second later he stopped short, like a bird alerted by a sharp sound. And that probably was exactly what is was, Ronan mused, when Adam started in a different direction. His head was tilted in favor of his bad ear. There was less tension in his shoulders.

“I don’t see any overturned rocks.” Ronan surveyed the place Adam had chosen to stop. Nothing jumped out at him.

Half his response was with rolled eyes. “No, it’s a sapling. Look.”

It could barely be called a sapling, wilted and probably snapped somewhere along its limb. But it caught a glimpse of the sun, slightly apart from the other trees. Ronan had the impression it would grow identically like the others if it survived.

“Somehow. It’s like the life in this tree,” he paused, and Ronan could all but see him turning words over in his head, “It’s like it gives off an aura, sort of like people. It’s distressed. I don’t know if it thinks, if there’s enough energy, but it’s almost dead.”

Blue mournfully knelt down beside him and began to carefully rebury a tangle of roots.

Ronan took a moment too long in dropping to his knees. The concern puckered in Adam’s brows reflected his eyes, Ronan knew, even if he couldn’t see them through his dusty eyelashes.

They splinted the tree. Ronan did less helping and a fair bit more admiring Adam’s hands as he tied the branch to the tree.

“Do you think it’s going to make it?” He asked when Adam stood to brush off his jeans.

“I hope so. I think the forest will protect it.”

And the day went on. Nothing as momentous as saving a life, though, and by the time dusk rolled around Ronan decided that had been the climax of the day. He couldn’t shake the feeling of wet moss off his hand or the earthy nature smell he and Adam had acquired. It was a strange sensation, being in such a sober place all day. It was a weight hanging above their heads.

Every now and then Chainsaw took flight to survey the forest. Once, she landed on Adam’s shoulder.

“Traitor,” Ronan scoffed.

She cocked her head at him, but turned back to Adam when he ran his long fingers down her feathers. The smile he had when he looked up at her made Ronan think maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing. Neither, apparently, did Chainsaw. She shuffled her wings in a way that could only be called _prideful_.

“ _Caw_ ,” she said.

Ronan agreed.

Adam was still focused on something only he could see. There was an absentness to the way his fingers lingered on Chainsaw. “Do you really feel nothing?” His eyes had a faraway look, somehow dark in the sunlight.

He looked ancient. He looked as old as the trees. Ronan had seen a kind of agelessness on Gansey sometimes, like he’d lived a thousand lives. It wasn’t as human on Adam. His eyes were wells deep with archaic knowledge he couldn’t share.

Ronan knew he felt the otherness, something beyond the initial impression this forest left. He knew he felt the tip of the iceberg, knew the iceberg was there, but beyond the water? “What does it feel like?”

“More alive than we can ever be.”

 

Adam didn’t say very much on their way back. He was almost as intent on the trees as Ronan was intent on him.

But when they were in the field again, Ronan realized they were missing something.

Adam turned to him almost immediately after he thought it. “Where’s Blue?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

They both looked for her, but Ronan could have sworn she didn’t want to be found.

“Maybe she saw some wild herbs or something,” he said after fifteen minutes.

Adam just looked at him.

“I don’t know,” he conceded when Ronan met his stare. “You think she’ll be able to find the car?”

“She’s resourceful.”

 

Adam sat with his back against the door of the BMW. Ronan was right; if they couldn’t find her they would have to wait for her to come back. What a _Blue_ thing to do.

Ronan had given up searching several minutes before him and now, for reasons Adam could not divine, strode through the field collecting what looked like flowers.

When he came back and sank down beside Adam, he saw that they were daisies.

Adam raised his eyebrows.

Ronan ignored him. He picked up one of the flowers on his knees and knotted it close to the steam, leaving just enough room in the tie to do it with the next one.

_Ronan Lynch knows how to make a flower chain._

“Don’t even, Parrish.”

Adam tried to suppress his smile. He couldn’t though, not when Ronan was glowering but careful not to let his irritation touch the daisies in his hands. Not when _Ronan_ , of all people, who punched a brick wall last week, was doing something so – so _harmless_. “I didn’t say anything.”

“But—” he began viciously.

“ _But_ nothing. It’s cute.”

Ronan’s fingers froze.

He made a strangled sound. “The _fuck_ is cute?” was all he could manage.

Adam laughed. _Shit_. What could he say? He could feel his cheeks flushing, ran a hand through his hair to hide even part of his face.

Ronan didn’t look up from his flower crown until Adam knew it was a crown. He leaned back against his car, spinning the stem of an extra daisy between his fingers.

After what seemed like years, he shook his head and looked at Adam.

Adam didn’t know what to say. He bit his lip to keep from smiling again at Ronan’s bewilderment.

He felt fingers behind his ear before he seen them. In his peripheral, a white flower poked out from his hair.

And then Ronan saw Blue and his hand fell away and he stood and the moment was over before Adam really even knew it was a different kind than the moment before.

Blue raised her eyebrows at them, vaguely mystified at the flowers.

Ronan didn’t elaborate. It was Ronan.

He set the flower crown on Blue’s head, earning a surprised but delighted smile. “Let’s go, maggot.”

 

He felt wistful when they left the forest. It was starkly different from the way Ronan blew out a breath.

“Good fucking riddance,” Adam heard him say under his breath.

“It wasn’t _that_ bad,” he said. He felt slightly defensive.

Ronan just raised his eyebrows once as if to say _yeah, okay._

The obligatory techno became muted background noise after a few minutes. It was a practiced skill. It was a brief but blessed break in the music when they dropped Blue off at 300 Fox Way. Once resumed, though, it washed back over him like white noise. When they rolled into the St. Agnes parking lot and Ronan clicked off the stereo, it startled him. He belatedly realized he had been staring at the gearshift where Ronan’s fingers stopped tapping out a beat once the music was gone.

“End of the line, Parrish.”

Adam met his eyes. It had grown dark languidly today. The sun sinking below the horizon reminded him of Ronan’s lazy self-possession. The purple haze reflected the dark circles underneath his eyes. How much sleep had he gotten?

“You wanna come up?”

By way of reply, Ronan stepped out of his car and followed Adam up the creaky stairs.

Somehow his shabby apartment was more inviting with Ronan there. He never hated to be alone, never really felt anything but lonesome, but he always missed Ronan as soon as he left. He missed his presence there. It was quiet, but Ronan could fill a room with his quiet.

Ronan took up his resident spot on the bed. Which was to say, all of the bed.

Adam snagged his Latin book from his bag by the door. He paused at his desk to carefully pull the daisy from behind his ear. Maybe he would press it into a book later for the hell of it, maybe he would because the gesture meant more to him than he cared to mention. Ronan hadn’t mentioned it. He wouldn’t, and Adam wouldn’t. It would be another thing that belonged in their silences. Adam had always thought he would come to resent the way Ronan didn’t talk about things, but he instead found it endearing. Ronan was simply a person of action.  
Adam could respect that.

He had to shove Ronan’s legs to one side of the bed. When he seated himself, he was again reminded of just how small a twin was with two people on it.

It was nothing different than anything before.

Ronan pretended to sleep while Adam periodically tossed out revision questions. He never was very convincing, despite moving about as much as the dead, and he never participated in much besides Latin, where he would occasionally sit up to correct Adam.

Adam had wondered about this at first. Was it just because Ronan didn’t like to see someone err in his area of expertise? That didn’t seem very _Ronan_. Was it, then, just because it was one of the few subjects he could help Adam with unasked?

He leaned forward, part of his chest pressed to Adam’s back as he casually explained why that was a certain way. Ronan lingered on his shoulder a moment longer as he pointed to a stanza of poetry they were studying. “I remember reading this in one of Dad’s journals.”

Adam’s ears perked. His focus shifted from Ronan’s breath too close to his ear, to his words. It wasn’t often Ronan mentioned his father. “Did he speak Latin?”

“I don’t know. Probably. Half of it was in English. But it’s definitely the same.”

His eyes roamed over the words by Catullus.

_Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?  
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior._

“I hate and I love,” Ronan translated in a low voice. There was something Adam didn’t recognize in his voice. His hand abruptly fell away from the book, and he dropped back almost in recoil. “It is torture.”

When it grew late and Ronan didn’t leave, Adam didn’t ask him to. It was a kind of quiet arrangement they had after Ronan showing up at his door a few too many times before nightfall and one too many times during the night.

Adam had to mull over why Ronan supposedly slept better there, in his tiny home. Was it the comfort of another person? Was it somewhere away from Monmouth? Did the terrors really leave him here, of all places?

Ronan never elaborated. Adam shoved his books away from him with a sigh. He gave Ronan, curled up on one half of the bed, a last look before he clicked the lamp off. He might have said goodnight, and might have heard a “Goodnight, Adam” but he was so tired, and it’d been so long since he heard his name from Ronan’s lips.

 

Adam worked on Saturdays.

Ronan didn’t remember until he felt the bed shift and settle with a missing weight and a terrible lack of warmth at some God-forsaken hour in the morning. Adam wouldn’t wake him up if he thought he was still asleep but Ronan wasn’t certain he wanted to be there alone. It would feel intrusive.

He didn’t want to leave. He hadn’t had a nightmare the night before. He hadn’t brought anything back with him. But he got up, switching the sweats Adam had given him for his jeans, pulling on his jacket.

He waited for Adam to step back out of the bathroom and checked his phone. Three staggered missed calls from Gansey. He texted once: _Since it’s almost eleven I’m going to optimistically assume you’re still with Adam. Hope I’m right._

Ronan rolled his eyes at that. They caught at Adam leaning on the doorjamb of the bathroom. He looked like there was something he wanted to say, lips slightly twisted. Ronan instinctively braced himself for questions.

“Hey,” was all Adam said. 

“Hey.”

Adam’s mouth curved up but he left it there.

He spun the BMW’s keys around on his fingers, shifting for something to say. In the end he just asked if Adam was going to stop by Monmouth after work. He said some bullshit about Gansey wanting a detailed report. Couldn’t sound desperate.

Adam nodded and glanced at the phone in Ronan’s hand. “Did you let Gansey know you were fine?”

“He guessed as much.” Ronan pocketed the phone.

“Ronan.”

“The fuck can I do about it now? He’s not my goddamn mother.”

Adam sighed. He suddenly looked more tired than Ronan had felt in a while. “No, but is it so hard to remember people care about you?”

 _Oh? You?_ It was a savage thought. A thought that always hurt.

“Fucking impossible.” Ronan shrugged apologetically, turning to the door. He tried not to slam it, but he had tried a lot of things. Restraint wasn’t one that had stuck.

 

Adam was not looking forward to school after being ignored by Ronan all day Sunday - and having half of his classes with him - but surprisingly, he didn’t go out of his way to be any more of an asshole than he already was.

When he dropped into his seat next to Adam in Latin, he quirked his eyebrows in the direction of their teacher and rolled his eyes, disgusted.

Adam snorted a laugh, though it was nothing different than usual. He couldn’t say exactly _why_ Ronan disliked the professor so much. It could have been his residual hate for Greenmantle being redirected.

Adam knew the way they chased Greenmantle away was dirty. If Ronan's life hadn't depended on it, he'd still feel bad about it. 

Some days Adam couldn’t figure out what Ronan kept going. If the same things befell him, Adam knew he wouldn't have been able to handle it. And it wasn’t that Ronan had taken the events that plagued him _well_ – it was that it hadn’t completely destroyed him. Listening to Gansey talk about the Ronan Adam had never met, he had come to realize that maybe this hadn’t obliterated that Ronan so much as forced parts of him down. How, if this was in every aspect a different boy than the one before, could Adam see slips here and there of a Ronan he didn’t know?

Adam had called himself unknowable, but he wondered if he didn’t know everyone else as well as he thought. If maybe everyone else was just as unknowable to themselves as they are to others. How can you know yourself when someone else can see something in you that you could have sworn you lost?

They were thoughts almost too deep for first period Latin. 

Adam turned his head slightly to look at Ronan. He should have been taking notes.

Ronan stared at his desk, brow furrowed. He definitely wasn’t listening to the lecture of the subtle grammatical finesse of Latin poetry. Adam wondered what kind of worlds Ronan could daydream up. If they were anything better than the cards dealt to him. If he wanted anything better, or not even better, just different. Adam couldn’t imagine a Ronan who didn’t live at Monmouth with Gansey. He couldn’t imagine a Ronan who didn’t sneer at everything, who didn’t hate his older brother. These things he had first learned about Ronan were definite. He wondered if somewhere in alternate space that the person Ronan was now could never have existed.

Maybe it was a selfish thought, when Adam knew he would never want a different Ronan. He knew it was a selfish thought when he wondered if any of Ronan’s realities had a place for him.

 

Ronan didn't say much after class, but he walked closer than the open halls of Aglionby called for. Adam had noticed, quietly, too much of this body language. 

When Ronan was angry there was space. Not a lot of space, not enough in the way of the furious waves that would roll off him. So much that you had to gauge what a safe distance was. When he was tense it was either closer to human contact or as far away as he could get. Now it was as casual as his obvious readiness to fight anything that had a pulse ever got. His brand of casualty. It reminded Adam of a partially sheathed knife, sometimes, with the serration catching at the lip of the leather.

Adam reasoned, fleetingly, if there was more than exclusively _Ronan_ to his body language.

He ground the idea out like an open flame, but Ronan always made him question it. 

Ronan could lounge on anything. As uncomfortable as the bench in the green was, he made it look that he sat there merely for comfort. His legs were sprawled, arm thrown around the back of the bench behind Adam. His arm seemed like a careless gesture, but Adam thought he knew better.

Gansey took it in with a sweep of his eyes when he materialized from wherever he didn’t tell them he went. They didn’t linger but Gansey didn’t miss much except the blindingly obvious. Half of what Ronan ever did promised questions from Gansey later.

“So,” he clasped his hands and Adam briefly speculated on whether or not Gansey had ever spoken at a seminar. He could have just then. “Blue filled me in on the latest repair. She said it went well?”

“It was life changing,” Ronan deadpanned.

Gansey compressed his lips and looked at Adam. His look suggested he knew Ronan and Adam had fought and was mildly displeased Adam still hadn’t come to Monmouth to tell him in person. Gansey had the largest arsenal of troubled looks Adam had ever seen.

“We should start looking again,” Adam said instead of addressing the look. “I don’t see why there’s not enough energy. Blue might be right. It could be dangerous to just keep making it stronger.”

Gansey smiled, discontent sliding off his face in favor of delight. “Fantastic.” It promised a hunt later, the smell of grass and the sun and whichever season they asked Cabeswater for; “I’ll call Blue after class.”

 

Blue watched her boys with narrowed eyes.

They all _looked_ fine. Noah was sitting against her arm, leaning over every time a bug hopped his way so he could show her. He held a grasshopper in his hands, hands that looked distinctly real. He was more human than he had been in a while. It was a combination of Cabeswater and Blue and his cheeks flushed with contentment. She was cold with his lack of body heat next to her but she couldn’t complain.

Gansey was turning through his journal on her other side. He wasn’t as close or as contented as Noah, though he did smile at her whenever he found her eyes. He sat straight, unlike how her and Noah leaned against a log. Every so often he’d tap his uncapped pen to his page in a way that said he wasn’t writing as much as he was thinking. Blue knew he wouldn't relax completely with Glendower still unfound.

She saw herself staring at the stars when she looked at him. It was unbearable to be so close and then abruptly shut down. It wasn’t like it hadn’t happened before - she thought of Gwenllian hiding all of her shoes before school yesterday morning - but it was kind of ridiculous that it _kept_ happening. Gansey always found opportunity for success in the unlikeliest of places, saw a way through things with what Blue decided was sheer force of will or presence. If the world would turn out some of it’s secrets for him, why not _this_ one, this one that meant the most to him?

Sometimes it felt like a cosmic joke.

“Holy shit, Parrish,” she heard Ronan laughing.

She looked over at the two of them. Ronan had been _so_ broody this week. If she acted like that she could hear him saying, _“Are you fucking pmsing or something?”_

He was staring up at the tree Adam was climbing with a sardonic smile. God forbid Ronan Lynch look actually happy. Blue almost rolled her eyes. There was obviously something going on between them.

Had Noah noticed? He twisted a little to look at her right after she opened her mouth to ask.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Oh my God, so, yeah?”

“ _Yeah_ ,” Noah said emphatically. “It’s pretty obvious, don’t you think? I mean one minute Ronan’s tearing Adam’s head off over nothing and the next he’s staring at him all balefully when he thinks no one notices.” 

Blue leaned forward a little. “Has he said anything to you?”

“ _Blue_ ,” he whined out her name. “Don't make me betray his trust.” 

She struggled with herself for a minute because that meant Noah knew something and maybe a lot of something if the way he pressed his mouth closed was anything to go by. “Okay, okay, don’t tell me. I’ll find out for myself.”

When she stood up Noah fell back in shock. His eyes were wide. “No, Blue – don’t –”

Blue shot him a withering glare, trying to telepathically say _shut up_. He still looked uncertain when he sat back, but it wasn’t like she was going to walk up to them and say, “Hey so are you guys sleeping together?”

That would be the easiest way to handle it, of course, but Maura had taught her _some_ tact. At least in the ways she handled customers with misfortunes in their futures, or the ones who cried incessantly. In retrospect, Calla may very well have taught Blue how much the first statement would be more effective. But half of that would be shock factor.

She just wanted to see what they were doing.

“Hey, maggot,” Ronan greeted her, a sharp twist to his mouth.

 _Lovely_. She gave him a foul look. Neither promised answers to careful questions. “Did you dare Adam to climb a tree?”

He scoffed. “I didn’t dare him to anything. He’s just got something to prove.”

“Oh, don’t you?” The way he lazed against the tree irritated her. You’d think this was _his_ forest. Blue let some of that annoyance creep into her voice. In some sense, this _was_ his forest.

His sneer widened to a razor of a smile. _No, I don’t_ , it said. He was a matter of fact, take it or leave it.

 _Damn him_. She flipped him off and he laughed.

“Adam? I’m coming up.”

Blue pulled herself into the tree easily. Maybe she didn’t have any _big feminist muscles_ – her mouth soured at those words – but climbing trees was all about leverage. She gave Ronan, who looked unimpressed, a final narrow-eyed stare before she scaled further up.

 

“Results are inconclusive,” Blue had told Noah quietly when they were delicately stepping through Main Street. That had sounded less lame in her head, and least lame in the crime show she had watched with Mr. Gray.

“So you didn’t actually say anything?” Noah sounded skeptic. He had periodically shot conspicuous looks at the two of them the entire way back, for all her insistence that she had _not_ put anyone on the spot.

She frowned at him.

He did have some reason to suspect, but it wasn’t her fault. Adam hadn’t come to Monmouth like everyone had naturally assumed he would. When she saw how pissy Ronan was when he stalked through the door to his room, she assumed the two had something to do with each other since Adam rode back with him.

Noah rolled his eyes so far back into his head Blue could see only whites. She was impressed and grossed out.

“Your eyes are going to fall out of your head,” Gansey observed.

Noah’s face lit up. It was probably something he hadn’t considered before. “You think?”

Blue thumbed the corners of the book Gansey had passed her when she sat back down. She was trying to refocus her attention, but this was yet another ancient history on Glendower, something she was sure he had read a dozen times.

He was already in his usual circle of archaic texts. Today it was mixed in with homework. She had her own in her lap, but like Gansey, the books next to her slowly grew with every school related frustration.

She picked another one from beside his knee. This one was titled _Owain Glyn Dwr of Wales, Musings and Commentaries_. There was more to the title but she had read enough. It was worse than the last one.

There was another loud bang from Ronan’s room.

Gansey glanced up to exchange her look with one his own. It was all exasperation and worry and questions he hadn’t asked her or Ronan or Adam. “This is absurd,” he said when his gaze shifted to Ronan’s door.

“It’s worse than usual,” Noah agreed. Blue shot him a bland look.

Gansey frowned at the door a moment longer. Eventually he just shook his head. She supposed he was used to it.

That was alright. Blue would pin one of them down eventually.

 

Adam heard a phone vibrate, which was weird considering he didn’t own a cell phone. He slid up on his elbows, having thrown himself on his bed. It rang _one, three, six_ , times before it stopped. He forced himself up and over to his desk where bit of shuffling revealed a sleek, naked grey cell phone underneath his English Lit book.

Ronan had thrown it at him while they were at Cabeswater yesterday. Three missed calls from Declan. Adam didn’t comment. Instead he had pocketed it by sheer force of habit. 

He still didn’t quite understand why Ronan had such a hatred for cell phones. He had convinced himself owning one was an unnecessary luxury, but it _was_ alluring. _Someday_.

Adam carefully put it into his messenger bag and slid that on his shoulder and when he opened the door he convinced himself that he was going to Monmouth to ask Gansey about homework. He wasn’t going because he had an excuse to see Ronan. He couldn’t even afford to go with the papers he had due. If he got a marginal amount of schoolwork done while he was there it could be somewhat justified. This wouldn’t guarantee Ronan would talk to him or Gansey wouldn’t have his nose in another Welsh reference guide. In retrospect, Ronan could still be mad at him. Adam didn’t even remember what they fought about. It was definitely something stupid, and probably something neither of them actually cared much about. Ronan had a habit of doing that.

By the time Adam unchained his bike he wasn’t sure if he should even bother, but he’d already had Ronan’s phone for almost two days. That needed to be taken care of.

When Adam arrived at Monmouth the camaro wasn’t there. His half-assed reason flew out the reason but he took the stairs two at a time anyway. Two minutes and he would go.

Ronan swung the door open before Adam could knock. His hand hovered uselessly for a second before he dropped it. 

“Hey,” Adam said.

Ronan leaned on the doorframe, a hand braced against it up by his head. His expression was remarkably disinterested but his jaw was tense. “Hey,” he said.

Adam produced the phone from his bag, already vaguely irritated. “I just realized I still had this.” He shoved the phone towards Ronan. “Figured you’d eventually need it.”

Ronan looked at it distastefully. “You could’ve kept it,” he said as shoved it in his pocket.

Adam let that hang. He raised an eyebrow.

“Are you coming in or not?”

“Where’s Gansey?”

Ronan’s mouth honed to a sneer. “No fucking clue, but Noah must be with him.”

Adam reasoned, after he filtered out Ronan’s scorn, that that was in all likelihood his way of saying _let’s do something_.

It wasn’t really going out on a limb when he asked, “Where do you want to go?”

Ronan pushed himself off the door, striding to the couch to pull his jacket from the back of it. He didn’t say anything immediately, not until the door was shut and his knuckles were almost white around the keys in his fist. 

“Anywhere but here.”

 

Ronan tore out of Monmouth’s overgrown parking lot. 

The way somebody drove said a lot about them. Ronan was all expression when he drove. The way he held the wheel in a casual hand, the twist of his wrist when he spun it in a turn. His car was like a part of him, an extension. His mood in how hard he squealed the tires all the way out of the city and how he didn’t slow down until a red light forced him. Too hard on the brakes but a steady exhale. 

There was a grabber blue Mustang idling in the neighboring lane. 

Adam knew the look on Ronan’s face.

He nosed further up to the light. Adam stared at anything except the Mustang’s open window. Ronan did the opposite. There was a tanned arm hanging out of it that definitely belonged to a teenager. The car was all aftermarket additions. Adam had to hold in a sigh. He had seen that spoiler on a Roush. 

The other set of traffic lights flicked to yellow.

Ronan had a biting smile for the driver. It widened when the Mustang's engine revved.

Adam watched his hand tighten on the wheel, fingers twitch against the clutch. He briefly wondered what kind of transmission the Mustang had under its scoop.

Green. 

The cars tore off the line.

Ronan was into second in a heartbeat, then speed-shifted to third. His smiled was edging towards something realer. 

_Gas, clutch, shift, gas_ , a certain precise, tightly-reined energy to each move he made.

The Mustang stretched for a second, maybe two, but it didn’t have a chance. Ronan had no hesitation in his shifting. It must have been an automatic.

He was laughing. Sometimes Adam barely recognized that sound.

It always came back to the driver. 

Eventually Ronan’s fingers went slack on the gearshift, about the time the other car was a honking blue blur in the rear mirrors, and he relaxed in his seat.

He glanced at Adam with a dare in his eyes. He still drove at a ground-eating speed, eyes sharp when they flicked from the road to Adam and back again. 

Adam wondered what else could get that smile out of Ronan. He shook his head, but he couldn’t really condemn it. “You’re going to be replacing your gears next year.”

Ronan snorted. “I don’t race that much.”

Somehow Adam doubted that. 

 

Ronan _was_ gentler when he downshifted next. Adam couldn’t really say how far they had come when he noticed. He didn’t know where they were, either. Ronan didn’t seem to mind. He didn’t look like he cared about much, just then. 

Maybe it was getting out of Henrietta, maybe the satisfaction of winning a race, but when Ronan pulled over at a rest stop his shoulders had an easy set. Adam’s contentment came purely from seeing Ronan like this.

His fingers trailed across the hood - which wasn’t hot, thankfully - as Adam crossed to the driver’s side. “To be fair, I don’t really think that was much of a match.”

He laughed. “I’d like to see you talk that in your hondayota.”

“I wouldn’t,” Adam said flatly.

“You haven’t lived until you’ve raced,” Ronan replied. There was no heat in it. He stretched instead of focusing energy towards an argument, both things that Adam could appreciate. 

After a span, though, he tilted his head and brought the keys to eye level, between his thumb and forefinger. Adam raised his eyebrows.

"You wanna drive?"

He was serious. It could have been a challenge or it could have been trust. Adam took them wordlessly. Either way, there wasn’t a difference if he stalled the engine.

 

He didn’t, _thank God_ , but he could almost blame Ronan when he popped the clutch more than once. Ronan hadn’t said anything yet, but Adam could feel his eyes.

He kept his own eyes forward. Anything was a step up from his shitty car, but something felt different about the BMW. Trying keep his mind on the road was hard when he couldn’t help thinking that this car was a part of Ronan. It was thrilling and terrifying to consider how much a car could affect someone’s life. Maybe it was just that it was Ronan’s which made it feel like Adam was doing something very, _very_ dangerous. 

“I think it’s illegal to go this slow,” Ronan commented after a while.

Adam spared him one look. “I’m doing the speed limit, Lynch.”

He didn't have to turn his head to know Ronan had the seat ridiculously far back, knees still almost brushing the glove box, and was the very portrait of self-satisfaction.

 _Damn him_. Adam punched the accelerator a little too hard - though not what Ronan would consider hard - and Ronan nodded appreciatively when the speedometer hit eighty. 

“Perfect cruising speed.” Then he continued conversationally, like eighty miles per hour was not an insane speed to cruise at, “But you’re definitely not ready to lose your racing virginity yet.” 

Something about the way he said it made it hard for Adam to object. It definitely implied Ronan was comfortable with Adam being reckless in his car. Pride was probably a stupid feeling, smiling a wrong reaction. Racing was a stupid idea. Adam the mechanic couldn’t deny there was a certain art to it, but it wasn’t really _him_. Street racing was Ronan’s thing, his savage form of art. 

Adam wondered if Ronan had gotten the BMW turboed. _That’s idiotic_. Ronan was idiotic. Maybe there just wasn’t enough room for it. Ronan would have done it without a second thought if it brought him up to the horsepower of the camaro. Adam wondered if he should ask. He could probably install it himself, though it had been a while since he’d worked on a BMW.

That was stupid. Ronan was making him stupid; he risked another look at him and found it hard to pull his eyes away again. Adam wanted to know what, exactly, drew him to Ronan. He had a certain magnetism when he was cold, or when he was angry; it demanded your attention. It demanded subservience and he didn’t even realize it. This Ronan, this one just watched. Adam could feel it like a tangible thing, like a brush against the back of his neck. 

He opened his mouth, but Adam never got a chance to hear what he was going to say; Ronan’s eyes widened, locked on something past Adam’s head, and his words turned into, “Holy fucking sh- ”

Adam’s attention snapped back to the road in a heartbeat, right in time to see a very large brown blur in front of the windshield. He thought he swore. Ronan forced the wheel sideways over his hand just as he hit the brakes to the floor. Adam forgot the clutch. The engine sputtered, died, the car spun out.

_Oh god what do I do oh my god oh holy shit_

“ _Adam_ ,” Ronan’s hand dropped from the wheel, which Adam then fought to straighten, “the _brakes_ , use the fucking brakes _fuck_ -” to slam his knee back down on the brakes. Adam hadn’t noticed he let off of them. “A _deer_ \- you’ve got to be shitting me -” 

Adam couldn’t tell if it made it worse or not; the car jolted and spun again, and he jolted and his head spun again. And then with a terrible, deafening screech of rubber and asphalt and velocity versus synthetic ingenuity versus traction, the car skidded to a halt. It teetered on two wheels, one smoking, for a breath and for a year before it hit the asphalt. 

Ronan took God and Mary’s various names in vain several times, in decidedly different and creative ways, before he stopped for a controlled inhale and exhale. Adam watched his eyes close for a couple more breaths, with the muscles of his face still twitching with adrenaline. 

“Are you okay?” was the first thing Ronan asked. 

Adam’s heart seized a little, and his hands still uselessly clenched and unclenched around the wheel. He couldn’t collect himself quite as immediately as Ronan could, even if he’d had just as much practice. 

“Ronan,” he started to apologize but, really, he couldn’t control the adrenaline still pounding through him. He couldn’t _believe_ Ronan had let him drive his car, that he had almost run over a deer, or that he almost killed them both, simply because he couldn’t look away from Ronan. Adam tried, but it turned into a laugh. What were the odds? It felt entirely too much like something was messing with his life. “Oh, God,” he covered his face with his hands. “I _can’t_ \- sorry,” he forced in between laughs, “ _Shit_ , I’m so sorry.” 

Ronan sounded relieved when he said, “I swear to God, Parrish,” so much so that Adam hesitantly dropped his hands, wondering if the infamous anger was about to kick in. Had he hit his head on something when the car spun out? Ronan’s expression was clear when he shook his head, and when he laughed. 

“We could have died,” he said. His smile wasn’t sharp. It looked easy and young and entirely disbelieving. 

“We could have always died,” Adam laughed, incredulity of his own at that smile. Were they high off adrenaline? 

Ronan looked at him, then, a _real_ look with his eyes narrowing a fraction, and with a touch more sobriety. “We could still die right now.” 

Adam, aware of that sudden shift, was also hyperaware that Ronan’s hand was still on his thigh, that the other was braced against his headrest, and that he was very, very close. That it had only been a few moments. That his heart was still racing. 

Ronan’s eyes emphasized his statement of mortality. It could have been profound, really, but he was rarely profound. It was action, it was noise, the decision facing consequence; now it was the desire in the way his head dipped closer, when his hand tightened on Adam’s thigh, when he stopped just short of their noses touching. 

It was anticipation, with an edge to it all when Adam froze. His brain could only keep coming to Ronan, careless, self-preserving, badass Ronan Lynch, was asking permission. He was more than that, of course, but those would always be traits that surfaced before others. Was that habit? Was that ironically fulfilling expectations? How much control did it take for Ronan to ask first? 

His hand tightened on Adam’s leg a little more with each second that passed, desperate. Ronan may have waited for him to curl his fingers around that jaw, maybe for Adam to say with his hands, _I’m as afraid of this as you are_. Ronan may have waited for him to move, or maybe he couldn’t; Adam kissed him. 

He was breathless before, and Ronan took everything else, like the feeling of falling flat on your back, air shoved from your lungs. There was something intoxicating about it. About Ronan’s hand moving to his hip, about his lips somehow hungry and cautious at once. The want behind them was beyond what Adam thought himself worth. He thought his heart would give out. How could Ronan say all of this with his mouth, but without his voice? Adam pulled him closer by his jacket, slid his other hand to the back of Ronan's neck. 

_I want this, God, I want this_. Adam’s hands shook; how much, how much can you want something? When Ronan pulled away, barely far enough away to even constitute as away, Adam impulsively closed the space before he could take a deep enough breath to sustain it. It was a chaste kiss, but a smile stayed on Ronan's lips when Adam broke it. 

For an agonizing second, Ronan lingered close enough that their mouths barely touching wouldn’t constitute as a kiss, though it almost could. Then he sat back so abruptly that it left Adam almost recoiling from lack of him. 

Adam didn’t know where to look but at Ronan. He still had that look in his eyes, still had that low note to his voice even after he cleared it. Belatedly, Adam realized he hadn’t actually heard whatever it was that he’d said. 

Ronan smirked. His cheeks were flushed, though, and it kind of ruined the effect. “I’ll drive home,” he said again. 

Adam let it grate him, made it grate him, so his face would eventually return to a normal color. He had to drag his eyes away from Ronan. Adam didn’t want to drive home; he’d rather kiss Ronan again, but he flung his door open too hard for that thought. Ronan laughed. 

“Don’t you think you’ve put my car through enough?” 

_I think you’ve put me through enough_. Adam exhaled noisily. “I already said I was sorry.” 

Ronan’s fingers grazed his arm, casual, possessive, when Adam slid past him to the passenger’s seat. He shut the door, lingering, gaze lingering. Adam felt there was going to be a lot of that now. After the engine sputtered before it roared to life, he finally said, with a smile that made Adam rethink a lot more than the last ten minutes, “You can pay me back.” 

It had been a few days since Ronan and Adam had been in an argument, and Blue was kind of worried. It felt weird. She had asked Noah what he thought on three separate occasions and each time he would just give her a look. She didn’t know what it meant, but he wasn’t talking. 

 

Blue threw herself on the couch next to Gansey. It was another weird thing to see him curled up with a book instead of fervently or thoughtfully paging through one at his desk or on the floor surrounded by a dozen more, comparing, contrasting. His glasses were sliding down his nose. 

“Gansey,” she said. 

It took him a minute to look up. When he saw her expression, he closed the book on his index finger and shifted in a way that, without actually moving much, said he was giving her his full attention. Or most of it, anyway. “Yes?” 

“Has Ronan said anything to you about Adam?” 

Gansey frowned. He glanced back at his book. “Like what?” 

“They’ve been quiet and weird for days?” 

Blue gave him flat look and he raised his hand in a way that was probably meant to be pacifying. She didn’t understand it. Was he telling her to pass go? To collect her two hundred dollars? 

“They’re _your_ best friends. Shouldn’t you notice these things?” 

He smiled like she had said something funny. And she had _not_. “I refuse to go looking for a problem where none exists. That would be entirely too self-defeating.” 

“Oh, would it?” 

“Jane - " 

“You know, Noah had a very interesting theory about you.” 

“Do I want to hear this one?” Gansey pushed his glasses back up with a mix of regret and distaste on his face. Another glance at his book. 

“He thinks your gaydar is broken.” 

“Excuse me?” 

“You heard me,” Blue said crisply, “And I’m pretty damn sure he’s right.” 

He floundered. Blue heard the book slide off the arm of the couch and hit the floor with a _thud_. Gansey looked to the floor, then back to her. “My - my _gaydar_?” 

“Your gaydar,” she repeated. 

“Jane,” he still struggled to grasp the meaning of the word. “Are you saying that I can’t tell when someone’s gay?” 

Blue opened her mouth to respond, but she heard laughter. It would have been uncomfortable and creepy during night, but during the day, she was always pretty sure it was Noah. Something brushed her arm, and then he was there. It would be hard to say he _appeared_ , because it was hard to say he hadn’t always been there when she thought back, but he - manifested in a physical a form? Blue knew his essence may have been connected to the ley line, but she thought his heart was here. 

He quirked his eyebrows at her, then Gansey. “That’s exactly what we’re saying.” 

“That’s absurd,” Gansey assured them in his very best Richard Campbell Gansey III voice. But he was _very_ unassured if he was falling back on _that_. “We would have to be fairly well acquainted to a, ah, _closeted individual_ to even prove your theory.” 

Noah started laughing again. “ _Closeted individual_ ,” was all he could snort out. 

“Gansey, you’re literally eighty years old,” Blue said. 

“How else do you expect - ” 

“Gansey,” Noah cleared his throat. He clasped his hands in his lap with sarcastic self-importance, which made him look all the more disheveled, and said, “What if your closest friend were gay?" 

Blue could see Gansey mentally listing all four of those in his head. She was sure he relisted each name for the several long moments before he opened his mouth, perplexed and ready to object. But the door opened, and Ronan walked in, and Blue and Noah exchanged looks. 

"The man himself,” Noah said. 

Ronan just looked at him. “I’m glad you’re talking shit about me behind my back, Noah, and not to my face.” 

“Where’s Adam?” 

"How should I know?” 

Blue and Noah scoffed at the same time. He smirked, and she said, “Because that’s _such_ a ridiculous question.” 

Ronan narrowed his eyes, but he ignored them to ask Gansey, “The fuck is up with them?” 

Gansey threw up his hands. 

Blue looked for something to say, but she really couldn’t bring herself to blurt out what needed to be said. So she stayed quiet, listening to Gansey turn pages she knew he wasn’t really reading, and watched Ronan collect his backpack. Noah, smirking the entire time, had been treated with two death glares, but he didn’t comment on them when Ronan left. 

Maybe it’d be interesting to see how this played out. 

 

Ronan felt those goddamn psychic eyes on his back even after he went down the stairs. Blue may have complained about having no powers that actually served _her_ a purpose, but she could make it seem like she did when she wanted to. 

Adam was still leaning against the BMW. He looked up when he heard Ronan, lips curving to a smile. 

Ronan didn’t know what made his heart clench; it was either the knowledge that Adam’s smile was so real, so relaxed, or just knowing that Ronan had something to do with it being there. Maybe that part of it was _for_ him. 

“Hey,” Adam said. 

His smile widened when Ronan brushed his knuckles against his cheek. He’d seen Adam not even five minutes earlier, and he already wanted to kiss him again. “Hey,” he said. Was it always going to like this? Was his stomach always going to turn over when Adam looked at him like that? His smile was pulled to one corner, something that Ronan had come to recognize as disbelief, and maybe a touch of impatience. 

“You don’t really want to study, do you?” Adam asked after a minute. His fingers toyed with the end of Ronan’s jacket, an action so innocently intimate that Ronan felt himself smiling. 

“No,” he said, lips against Adam’s temple. “I can think of a few other things I’d rather be doing.” 

**Author's Note:**

> i'd like thank [yashvi](http://bluesgnt.tumblr.com/) and years & years because this would still be sitting in the idea pile without my editor (and the brain behind "adrenaline kiss") and listening materials.
> 
> i hope you enjoyed it!! thank you for reading xx
> 
> p.s. send me your hc/aus on my [ tumblr](http://declanlvnch.tumblr.com)


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